America’s Nero

[dweller]

Bush’s impeachable failure
BY STEPHEN MINDICH AND PETER KADZIS

Disbelief. Horror. Outrage. Shame. Those are words, marks on paper. They are insufficient to capture the emotion and intellectual revulsion that arise from the national government’s incompetence and President Bush’s utter failure to take charge and lead in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, the worst national disaster to savage the nation, devastating the Gulf coast and threatening to turn New Orleans, a historic and soulful city, into a 21st century Pompeii. Nero at least fiddled while Rome burned. As Katrina roared, Bush vacationed.

Few Presidents are tested once as sorely as Bush, let alone twice. When terrorists simultaneously attacked the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, Bush went into hiding. When the news first reached him of the New York attacks, he froze like a deer in on-coming headlights and continued reading to children in a Florida classroom. Commentators may praise his bravado days later when he appeared at Ground Zero and, bullhorn in hand, successfully rescued his compromised reputation. A nation in need of leadership and reassurance was forgiving and, in Hollywood fashion, rallied round. Today, the situation is different. No longer believing the lies and subsequent miscalculations that have mired us in the mind-numbing desolation called Iraq, Bush has no political capital with which to trade. Bush’s failure is America’s failure. We stand humbled before world opinion.

In the days after Katrina wore herself out, while television broadcast continual scenes of death, devastation, and third-world deprivation, Bush’s smug and clueless disaster lieutenants, Homeland Insecurity czar Michael Chertoff and Emergency Mismanagement chief Michael Brown, denied there were problems -- let alone a crisis of unimaginable and frightening proportions. The Republicans are fond of railing against Washington’s pointy-headed bureaucrats, but this time the offenders were Bush men. And like their President, they proved to be cold, callous, and out of touch. A leader would have fired them. But Bush, who has no capacity for reappraising his own failures, let them stand. As long as they hold public positions, Chertoff and Brown will be the twin embodiments of a failure that can only be called inhumane.

snip

By all accounts, the devastation inland is equally appalling as that in New Orleans. And Bush’s failure there is just as painful and shameful. But New Orleans is a special case, not only because of its concentrated population or its cultural and economic significance. It has been rated as the third most likely object of a terrorist attack. If what we’ve seen - or failed to see - happen there is any indication, than the entire nation is woefully unprepared for an ambitious terrorist assault. When the Director of the Army Corps of Engineers three years ago testified on Capital Hill that Bush mandated budget cuts would hamper the corps’s ability to maintain that portion of the nation's infrastructure in its charge, he was given 30 minutes to resign or be fired.

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/editorial/documents/04948106.asp

bold added
dp

[buff2]

1. During his lying ass campaign against Gore.....

He always said "they didn't lead"..."I'll lead,I know how to lead".Yeah,you dumb phuck,you sure showed US how you can "lead",didn't you? :grr:

[Strelnikov_]

2. Echos Of Gen. Shinseki n/t

[mwwittin]

8. Shinseki was a friend

When he was the General of the US Army in Germany General Shinseki was a good friend to us. I heard him speak at a ceremony in Heidelberg when I was there and he was very smart and friendly. What is he doing now? Why is he like Bush like "loindelrio" says?

General BB Bell is also a very strong friend for Germany, but I have not heard him speak.

[yorkiemommie1]

3. History channel tonight

featured Roma and had segment on Nero.( and his mother ). I could not help but think of * and that woman who bore him. How truly evil she must be to have spawned such atrocious beasts.

[texpatriot2004]

4. Really, the Director had 30 minutes to resign or be fired? Wow.

What was the Director's name? Who was the Director then?

[gatorboy]

5. Mike Parker

Original article seems to be missing but I Gogled this:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.society.liberalism/browse_thread/thread/bfd3eb2c26ea9cb7/c3bac8fb8ad9240d?lnk=st&q=Director+of+the+%22Army+Corps+of+Engineers%22+fired&rnum=1&hl=en#c3bac8fb8ad9240d

[dweller]

6. there ought to be some way

of retrieving that story, or others like them.

going to dig around some.

dp

edit:
http://orig.clarionledger.com/news/0203/07/m05.html
March 7, 2002
Criticism leads to Parker's ouster
Miss. native asked to resign as assistant secretary of Army
The assistant secretary of the Army, Mississippi's former U.S. Rep. Mike Parker,
was forced out Wednesday after he criticized the Bush administration's proposed
spending cuts on Army Corps of Engineers' water projects, members of Congress
said.

"Apparently he was asked to resign," said U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., a
member of the House Appropriations Committee's energy and water development
subcommittee that oversees the corps' budget.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, also said
Parker was dismissed.

Parker's nomination to head the corps drew heavy criticism last year from
environmental groups pushing to downsize the agency, calling its flood control
projects too costly and destructive.

Parker earned the ire of administration officials when he questioned Bush's
planned budget cuts for the corps, including two controversial Mississippi
projects.

oh, it's the environmentalists fault .. :eyes:

dp

[slor]

7. Thanks for posting n/t